Future Aspirations
To better understand the impact of our work and to guide our future work, DCRT would like to improve its fish passage monitoring.
Our aspirations include:
- A fish counter. This would allow us to see whether fish – particularly salmon – are using them. Currently, sightings and electrofishing are our only ways to survey fish, both of which come with many challenges.
- Helping partners to plug gaps in fish monitoring, such as supplementary monitoring in rivers.
The phrase “build it and they will come” is quite apparent to the Don’s fishery. If we restore rivers to an as natural state as possible fish will naturally colonise and repopulate our river reaches. This can be achieved by:
- Notching of weirs. Now that salmon are breeding in the catchment.
- Notches will allow young salmon to migrate to the sea, where they spend their adult years before returning to breed.
- Naturalising straightened sections provide the morphological features fish need to reproduce.
- Removing (in whole or part) weirs to immediately remove barriers to fish, or building fish passes to try and mitigate them.
- Conducting more in-stream management of water plants and marginal vegetation (trees, shrubs), to allow fish access to quality habitat for every stage of their lifecycle.
- Improving water quality through better land/urban management and waste water management.
